Tools

About

Groups to discover, create, & share what you love most.

Published:

Work from Early 2013

About

Forgeo is an app that uses groups to discover, create, & share what you love most.

Oftentimes, I see sites that display multiple locations (on a map) that are relevant to their idea, company, brand, etc. There are various items, discussions, events, etc. around these points of interest. Forgeo was made to simplify this process. The end goal is that it would be the go to app for mapping and discussing things.

How does this happen you ask? After large amounts of research, brainstorming, and sketching, I broke it down into 4 essential categories:

Groups

• Created by users

• Open to the public or invite only

• Used for brands, groups of friends, communities, organizations, etc.

• Within groups, users make Posts (see below)

Posts

• Any user in the group can post

• Can attach an Event or a Location (see below)

• Can have hashtags to handle topics - Then you can enhance search within a group - Users can view all posts of a certain topic easily (ex: Users want to read about food in a travel group) (like a forum without the trouble of the admins defining topics to post under)

• Can have replies - enhance the discussion of the post (like a forum)

Locations

• Discover where things are happening

• The map view will show an overview of what posts are referencing

• Example: A band maps where all of their tour stops are

• Example: A travel agency group maps locations that they support

• Example: A food group maps the top 10 burgers in America

• Example: A skateboard group maps top skate spots and then takes it to the next step attaching photos and videos of the best trick at each spot.

Events

• A calendar for your group

• Attach dates to any post

• Example: A band adds dates to their post which also includes info and location. They also embed ticket sales.

Naming the CompanyI made a long list of names that I thought were relevant and began analyzing them and combining them. The one that stuck was "Forgeo". It was great for representing words like forum, forge, and geo. It was also relatively available on the internet and social media. In the end I ended up communicating with some dude from Czech and buying forgeo.com from him. It was like a year long process, but a great feeling once I finally got it!

Designing the App

Let's face it, Forgeo is a big idea. We decided to start with an iOS and web app. I went thorugh the process of brainstorming, sketching, wireframing, UX, UI, prototyping, icon design, interaction design, etc. for both the iOS and web app along with the landing page site. Check out some of the work below along with some prototypes of the iOS app.

Reflection

In the end, the project didn't work out. We had struggles with finding time to work on it, technology decisions, rescources, etc.

In hindsight, I would have simplified the project x1000. The v1 was just too much to tackle at once. I would also make some major changes to the design, I would most likely start over.

In the beginning I didn't know what to simplify it to. I had way too many ideas, I even have good ideas that go far beyond what I have shared here. After the fact, it is pretty clear to me how to simplify the app.

Knowing what I know now, I have started revamping this project. The mvp will most likely just be part of the discussion portion. This portion should provide some solid points for testing and allow the app to gain traction while we continue to iron out the feature set.